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Jameson Taillon roughed up
One constant for the Pittsburgh Pirates during their recent stretch of good play that got the team back into contention has been the starting pitching has been pretty good overall.
That wasn’t the case Tuesday night in San Francisco.
Jameson Taillon turned in the worst start of his career as the Bucs dropped the second game of the series to the San Francisco Giants 11-3.
Taillon lasted just three innings, allowing 10 runs (nine earned) on nine hits. The one rough outing saw Taillon’s season ERA jump an entire run all the way to 4.03.
His mound opponent Madison Bumgarner allowed one run over five innings as he earned his first win of the season. It was the first win for any Giants starting pitcher since July 5.
The Bucs, who fell behind 10-0 after four innings did have 12 hits on the night, but the hole was way to big to climb out of.
David Freese and Starling Marte provided RBI singles for the Pirates.
Freese, Jose Osuna and Josh Harrison each had two hits apiece.
It is very big that the Pirates take today’s game and win the series before heading to San Diego. Jeff Samardzija (4-11, 5.05 ERA) takes the hill for the Giants. He will be opposed by Trevor Williams (4-4, 4.74 ERA) who is looking for his fourth win in the past five road starts.
With the loss, the Pirates now sit 3.5 games behind the first-place Milwaukee Brewers.
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Defense, Defense, Defense
The Pirates defense has gotten much better since struggling early in the season, but we saw last night how the defense can impact the game in a negative fashion and it is something that can’t continue.
Taillon wasn’t very good for a change, but he didn’t get much help from his defense as a throwing error from Josh Bell likely led to a pair of second-inning runs and Osuna didn’t play a double off the bat of Buster Posey very well, which ultimately led to a three-run triple from Joe Panik.
People will continue to urge Clint Hurdle get Osuna more starts to get his bat in the lineup, but he can be a liability in the field often.
Granted he is a young kid learning new positions on the fly, but when you are in a pennant race, you simply can’t give runs away. Osuna take poor routes to balls on a nightly basis and it is proving costly.
The Pirates have made the sixth most errors in baseball with 66 this season and that doesn’t take into account the plays that should have been made that were turned into hits.
Good teams make the plays they need to make, especially when they are in contention. It will be nice to see Hurdle’s team get back to that.
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